City Index

The creation and execution of Celebrity Trader

City Index: Celebrity Trader

Brief

Global trading house, City Index was seeking to increase market share and brand exposure in the famously competitive FOREX market, and was looking for something more engaging than the traditional advertising its industry relied upon. In particular, the brand wanted to emphasise how relatively simple and mobile the trading platform was, and how anyone could now become a trader, wherever they happened to be.

Creative

Our research revealed the brand’s target consumers were motivated by key celebrities’ recommendations, so we devised the ‘City Index Celebrity Trader’ campaign, where celebrities would trade thousands of pounds every month on the brand’s platform, with the proceeds going to charity.

Celebrity Traders would then engage their social media followings, alongside integrated monthly PR and digital campaigns, to share the brand’s message that ‘anyone can trade’. Meanwhile, visual content would be generated demonstrating the celebrity utilising the platform on the move, in their natural environment.

Execution

The first Celebrity Trader took place in November 2010, when England’s Rugby World Cup winner, Ben Cohen took up the challenge to great success, generating national and London coverage, alongside thousands for his charity.

Since then dozens of famous faces have taken the challenge, across sports, entertainment, music, film, politics and current affairs, including Alicia Keys, Mark Ronson, Heston Blumenthal, Michael Owen, Ricky Hatton, alongside many more.

The monthly campaign goes strong to this day, with a digital seeding element added to better leverage the additional video content and secure high quality links back to the client microsite.

Participating Celebrity Talent

Just some of the dozens of talent who have taken part so far:

Video Content Examples

Example Celebrity Tweets

Results

After over three years of monthly activity, the total social media reach so far is in excess of 50 million, causing unprecedented traffic spikes, and the activity has generated nearly £150,000 of funds for good causes.

Media coverage has been consistently strong, with coverage secured across a whole host of target titles, including The Sun, Daily Mirror, The Times, Daily Express, Evening Standard, Metro, Square Mile, and many more.

Client Feedback

“The activity seeds very well with our drive for content innovation, and has proved very successful in raising our brand awareness and product cut through. We are delighted with the quality of their service and would happily recommend their services in this field.”